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Program on Southern
Politics, Media and
Public Life
School of Journalism
and Mass
Communication
The University
of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
JUNE 2001 • NUMBER 28
Thad Beyle
Editor & Associate Director
beyle@ email. unc. edu
Ryan Thornburg
Managing Editor & Assistant Director
thornburg@ unc. edu
Ferrel Guillory
Publisher & Director
guillory@ unc. edu
N. C. DataNet is a quarterly publica-tion
ofthe Program on Southern
Politics, Media and Public Life in
the School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at The University
ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Do " bellwether" counties exist in North Carolina for
presidential elections? Does victory in any county
reliably predict which candidate will win the state’s
electoral votes?
Research indicates that such
counties do exist for presi -
dential contests. Twenty-seven
counties sided with
the statewide victor in a t
least 10 of the last 11 presi-dential
elections dating
back to 1960, including
George W. Bush in 2000.
This study identifies those
counties that serve as the
best and worst indicators of
presidential victory in North
Carolina and explores their
possible connections.
Prior to 1968, Democratic
presidential candidates
could feel assured of a vic-tory
in North Carolina and
in most other states of the
Solid South. Then the Civil
Rights movement and shifts
in party ideology combined
with the success in North
Carolina of American Party
candidate George Wallace to
give Republican Richard
Nixon a win in 1968.
Since then, the only Democrat to carry the state
was Jimmy Carter in 1976, no doubt aided by fall-out
from the Watergate scandal. Democratic candi-dates
rarely contest the state now, despite the
excellent track record of Democratic gubernatorial
bids.
Of the 27 presidential bellwether counties since
1960, only three have a perfect record: Carteret,
Dare and New Hanover – all coastal counties .
However, the other 24 predicted the victor each
election since 1968, with the excep-tion
of Union County, which incum-bent
Jimmy Carter won in 1980.
There are several possible factors
that could affect the voting tenden-cies
of these counties. These include
the race, age, and level of education
of the voters within a county, and
whether a county is in or near to a
metropolitan statistical area.
Historical factors are also of impor-tance.
The measures used here ar e
based on 1990 census data.
In western North Carolina, there are
eleven bellwether counties: Ashe,
Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay,
Graham, Macon, McDowell, Polk,
Rutherford, and Transylvania. They
contain an extremely high percent-age
of whites, many with less than a
college education. These mostly
rural counties lie in a traditionally
Republican part of the state but
could have identified with the rural
Southern backgrounds of Lyndon
Johnson ( 1964) and Jimmy Carter
( 1976, 1980).
In the western Piedmont there are
seven bellwether counties - Forsyth, Gaston,
Lincoln, Rowan, Stokes, Surry and Union. Lincoln,
Stokes and Surry bear resemblances to their west-ern
counterparts, but the others tend to have
slightly more educated and di verse population. All
but Surry are classified as a part of a metropolitan
statistical area.
N. C. ’ s Presidential Bellwe t h e rs
ER I C JO H N S ON, Junior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
1 North Carolina’s Presidential
Bellwethers
3 Mapping the 2000 Presidential
Election in North Carolina
4 Growth and Politics in 20th
Century North Carolina
6 What If North Carolina Used the
District System of Assigning
Electors?
7 Presidential and Congressional
Voting Clearly Linked
8 Presidential Phone and Mail Polls
Deliver Consistent Results
9 Exit Polls Show Gap Between
North Carolina and Nation
9 Ticket Splitting Still Prevalent in
North Carolina
10 Primary Predicted Election Trends
1 1 P r i m a ry and General Election
Results Varied Wi d e ly
In This Issue
S E E B E L LW E T H E R S ON PAGE 2 ›
Dating back to 1960, 27 of
North Carolina’s 100 coun-ties
sided with the
statewide victor in at least
10 of the last 11 presiden-tial
elections, including
George W. Bush in 2000.
Most of the bellwether
counties are rural or subur-ban.
Eleven are in the
west, seven are in the
Piedmont, and nine are in
the east.
whites and a relatively lesser- educated popu-lation
lead to elections that the suburban
and rural whites still usually decide. And
Johnston is rapidly becoming a " suburb"
county for Raleigh.
Wilson County presidential election results
tend to be closer than Johnston or Nash
because it is more diverse and lacks subur-ban
voters.
In the second g roup of coastal counties,
Beaufort and Craven both contain somewhat
lesser- educated and relatively diverse popula-tions
living in rural areas. Here the balance
usually tips toward the Republicans. Carteret
and Dare counties both lack diversity, though
Dare’s education levels are higher than the
state average.
Onslow and New Hanover counties contain a
Marine base and a university, respectively,
bringing in voters from all over the country
and state, creating an environment that usu-ally
supports a Republican but maintains a
competitive Democratic base.
At the other end of the bellwether scale are
Northampton and Orange counties which
serve as the worst predictors for presidential
victory in North Carolina. Voters in these
counties consistently vote Democratic— not
surprising given the presence of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
Orange County and the fact that only 40 per-cent
of the people of Northampton County
are white.
Members of the university community and
the minority community tend to stick to the
Democratic Party, and these counties do not
buck that trend.
Presidential bellwethers in North Carolina do
not share the degree of similarity that guber-natorial
bellwethers do, as we will note in an
upcoming issue. If anything, presidential
bellwethers are predominantly rural or sub-urban,
other than Forsyth and New Hanover
counties. The implications for presidential
candidates are less clear in this situation.
Recent years leave Democrats with little rea-son
for optimism for carrying the state, yet
Republicans cannot point to one factor that
guarantees them victory with certainty. To
win the state in a presidential election, candi-dates
should run television advertising cam-paigns
using media markets such as
Charlotte, Piedmont Triad, Research Triangle
and Wilmington media markets. The cover-age
area of stations in these cities encom-passes
most of the 27 bellwether counties
across the state.
Candidates should advertise on television
and concentrate personal appearances in
other battleground states. n
However, these counties generally contain
suburbs of cities such as Charlotte or the
Piedmont Triad ( Greensboro, High Point and
Winston- Salem), which generally vote for the
Republican presidential candidate.
Down East there are nine bellwether counties
in two separate clusters. The first is the pock-et
of Johnston, Nash and Wilson counties just
east of Raleigh and Wake County. Then there
are six coastal counties - Beaufort, Carteret,
Craven, Dare, New Hanover and Onslow. In
the first three, a lower percentage of
2 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
COUNTY 1960* 1964* 1968 1972 1976* 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 BELLWETHER
RATE -%
CARTERET Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
DARE Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
NEW HANOVER Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
ASHE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
BEAUFORT Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
BURKE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CALDWELL - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CHEROKEE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CLAY - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CRAVEN Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
FORSYTH - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
GASTON - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
GRAHAM - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
JOHNSTON Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
LINCOLN - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
MACON - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
MCDOWELL - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
NASH Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
ONSLOW Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
POLK - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
ROWAN - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
RUTHERFORD - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
STOKES - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
SURRY - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
TRANSYLVANIA - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
UNION Y Y Y Y Y - Y Y Y Y Y 91
WILSON Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
NORTHAMPTON Y Y - - Y - - - - - - 27
ORANGE Y Y - - Y - - - - - - 27
SOURCES — America Votes and United States Census Bureau
KEY —
* — Democratic victory. All other statewide races won by Republicans.
Y — County vote went to statewide winner.
- — County vote did not go to statewide winner
A — American Party candidate George Wallace carried the county.
County Victory as an Indication of State Victory in Presidential Elections
Presidential Bellwether Counties, 1960- 2000 Election Accuracy
2000 Presidential Election Results, by County
2000 Presidential Election Results, by Congressional District
M apping the 2000 Presidential Election in North Caro l i n a
› B E L LW E T H E R S F ROM PAGE 1
›
these two election years also moved from just
below one quarter of the total vote to over
one half of the total vote.
Partisan Voting in the 15 Largest
Counties: Both major parties received just
less than one quarter of their statewide presi-dential
vote from voters in these counties in
the 1900 election. By the 2000 election, their
share of the total state vote for their candi -
dates had more than doubled, with the
Democratic vote up by nearly 4 percentage
points over the Republican vote.
The Three Traditional Metropolitan
Areas: In 1900, one in 12 votes came from
the three traditional metropolitan areas of
Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad, and what is
now the Research Triangle. Now more than
one in three votes comes from the seven core
counties in these metro areas. The greatest
growth in the last few decades has been in
the three core Research Triangle counties —
Durham, Orange and Wake — that have seen
their share of the statewide vote more than
double since the 1960 presidential election.
The Smaller Metropolitan Counties: A
slightly different picture emerges when look-ing
at the four smaller metropolitan counties
of the state — Buncombe ( Asheville),
Cumberland ( Fayetteville), New Hanover
( Wilmington), and Pitt ( Greenville).
Their share of the statewide vote has not
risen as sharply as their more traditional
counterparts — from about one in 15 voter s
in the 1900 presidential election to one in 11
voters in the 2000 election. But each is grow-ing,
with New Hanover County showing the
largest growth over the past two decades.
One political fact of life is clear from these
changes. Each of these metropolitan coun-ties
and the 15 largest counties are part of
the major media markets in the state. Where
they are marginally in those major media
markets cable television and individual
antennas bring the media market to them.
Political campaigning will continue its move
toward direct contact with potential voter s
though television and radio political ads in
those media markets. We saw this quite
clearly in the 2000 elections and can only
expect more in the future as the state contin-ues
growing. n
One gains some
insight into the
changes in our state ’ s
politics by stepping
back and measuring
the impact of growth
on the body politic
during the 20th cen-tury.
To aid in this endea v-or
are four tables
comparing the way in
which North Carolina
voters cast their bal-lots
in six separate
presidential elections
between 1900 and
2000. The specific
presidential elections
selected occurred in
the last year of the
decade, the same
year that the U. S.
Census is taken.
We look at these six
elections from two perspectives. First is the
history of how voters in the 15 largest coun-ties
in the 2000 Census actually voted over
the past 100 years. Second is a similar history
of how voters in the state's major and rising
metropolitan areas have voted over the same
period.
Here are some highlights to consider:
Overall Growth: In the 1900- 2000 period,
the population of the state more than
quadrupled. However, the size of the presi-dential
vote increased nearly
10 times. Much of this change
is due to major shifts in gov-ernmental
election policies —
the adoption of the 19th
Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution in 1920, which
gave women the right to vote;
the passage of the Voting
Rights Act in 1965, which guar-anteed
minorities the right to
vote; and the adoption of the
26th Amendment, which
opened the voting booth to
citizens between 18 and 21.
The 15 Largest Counties
of 2000: A considerable
amount of this growth focused
on the 15 most populous
counties of 2000. While these
counties held just less than a
quarter of the state’s popula-tion
in 1900, by 2000 they
were home to nearly half the
state’s population. Their share
of the presidential vote in
G rowth and Politics in
20th Century North Caro l i n a
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
4 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. state population according to the census conducted that election year.
215 largest counties percent ofthe total N. C. population that year.
3Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates.
4Total presidential vote in the 15 lar gest N. C. counties [ by 2000 Census] that elec-tion
year, all candidates, and percent of the total N. C. presidential vote from these
15 counties.
YEAR TOTAL 15 PRESIDENT 15 LARGEST COUNTIES
POP. 1 CO.% 2 TOTAL VOTE3 VOTE % 4
1900 1,893,810 24.9 292,457 70,699 24.2
1920 2,559,123 29.0 538,295 157,213 29.2
1940 3,571,623 34.3 822,648 287,721 35.0
1960 4,556,155 41.6 1,368,556 573,973 41.9
1980 5,880,095 45.9 1,855,833 838,693 45.2
2000 8,049,313 49.3 2,911,262 1,463,841 50.3
15 Largest Counties of 2000
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total Democratic presidential vote in the 15 largest counties [ by 2000 Census], and
the percent of the total Democratic presidential N. C. vote this represents.
2Total Republican presidential vote in the 15 lar gest counties [ by 2000 Census], and
the percent of the total Republican presidential NC vote this represents.
3Did the national winner carry N. C.?
YEAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN WINNER, PARTY N. C.
VOTE % 1 VOTE % 2 WIN3
1900 38,045 24.1 32,048 24.1 MCKINLEY, R NO
1920 91,994 30.1 65,219 28.0 HARDING, R NO
1940 223,652 36.7 64,069 30.0 ROOSEVELT, D YES
1960 274,489 38.5 296,574 45.2 KENNEDY, D YES
1980 377,172 43.1 423,718 46.3 REAGAN, R YES
2000 659,414 52.4 793,481 48.6 BUSH, R YES
Partisan Voting in the 15 Largest Counties
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates.
2Total presidential vote in the Research Triangle counties – Durham, Orang e, and Wake
– and the percent ofthe statewide vote that represents.
3Total presidential vote in the Charlotte metropolitan counties - Gaston and
Mecklenburg – and the percent of the statewide vote that represents.
4Total presidential vote in the Piedmont Triad counties – Forsyth and Guilford – and the
percent ofthe statewide vote that represents.
YEAR PRESIDENT RESEARCH CHARLOTTE PIEDMONT
RACE VOTE1 TRIANGLE CO'S METRO CO'S TRIAD CO'S
VOTE % 2 VOTE % 3 VOTE % 4
1900 292,457 15,719 5.6 9,713 3.3 11,773 4.0
1920 538,295 23,599 4.4 27,685 5.1 32,450 6.0
1940 822,648 42,822 5.2 57,337 7.0 64,124 7.8
1960 1,368,556 90,517 6.6 128,966 9.4 129,252 9.4
1980 1,855,833 181,423 9.8 188,262 10.1 187,420 10.1
2000 2,911,262 402,168 13.8 322,215 11.1 287,206 9.9
Three Traditional Metro Areas. 1900- 2000
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates .
YEAR PRESIDENT
RACE VOTE1 BUNCOMBE CUMBERLAND NEW HANOVER PITT
VOTES % VOTES % VOTES % VOTES %
1900 292,457 7,899 2.7 4,113 1.4 2,307 0.8 5,456 1.9
1920 538,295 18,184 3.4 5,205 1.0 4,814 0.9 5,060 0.9
1940 822,648 33,601 4.1 7,168 0.9 10,235 1.2 10,436 1.3
1960 1,368,556 52,343 3.8 19,673 1.4 22,957 1.7 15,984 1.2
1980 1,855,833 53,530 2.9 45,228 2.4 32.244 1.7 26,371 1.4
2000 2,911,262 85,476 2.9 77,151 2.7 66,319 2.3 43,075 1.5
Smaller Metro Counties. 1900- 2000
Location of North Carolina’s 15 Most Populous Counties
›
P residential and Congressional Voting Clearly Linke d
votes. Democrat Bill Clinton carried five of
the state’s congressional districts in 1992, and
three of the state’s congressional districts in
1996 yet received none of the state’s electoral
votes. In 2000, Al Gore mirrored the 1996
race by winning Eva Clayton’s 1st District,
David Price’s 4th District, and Mel Watt’s 12th
District. If North Carolina had joined Maine
and Nebraska as the only other state to have
the District System in 2000, the Florida deba-cle
would not be as critical because the three
electoral votes Gore would have received in
North Carolina might have made him the
winner with 270 of the 538 Electoral College
votes. If all the states allocated their electoral
votes by district, Bush still would have won.
The most important reason for such a change
is to reduce the impact of the exit polls and
the media’s need to report who will be the
winner. Currently, exit polls are taken on a
statewide basis through a sampling process
that project results representative of what the
final vote count will be. That would still
work in those states with only one congres-sional
seat and it might also work in those
states with only two congressional seats. But,
in states with more than three cong ressional
districts, the costs of conducting exit polls
would become much greater and there
would probably be quite a few congressional
district electoral votes that are " too close to
call."
On Election Night I worked at the Associated
Press helping call the various elections in the
state. At about 7: 15 p. m., the head of the
Raleigh Bureau got a call from the
Washington AP office indicating they were
going to call Bush the winner in North
Carolina as soon as the polls closed at 7: 30.
Ten minutes later they called and said they
were going to call Mike Easley the winner in
the governor’s race, still before the polls
closed and any votes had been counted.
That became a bit difficult a few minutes
later as the early returns showed Richard
Vinroot leading Easley for at least a half- hour
while Easley was being called the winner.
These early exit poll driven calls in the
Eastern and Mid- Western time- zone states
have been a problem over many of the
recent presidential elections. Once it
becomes clear that the states in those two
time zones have elected the next president,
voting becomes less of a need in the Western
time- zone states. While the media has tried
to control for this impact, we still saw the
Florida vote " called" early for Gore before the
polls had closed in the western Panhandle
counties of that state. Besides the " call"
being wrong as the election in that state was
too close to call, it violated the unwritten
rule against calling the election in a state
before the polls close.
A state legislator in Wisconsin has proposed
that the 2004 presidential vote in his state
not be tabulated and reported until after the
polls close on the west coast. This would
help alleviate the time- zone problems. That
might work but the drive to find out just who
is winning is almost too great to overcome by
instituting such a rule. There are too many
individuals involved in the election process
that could leak information to the anxious
media and political actor s.
Why not just make it all a bit more complex
just like the country we live in has become?
Make the EC vote consist of the 100 votes
from the 50 statewide results and the 438
votes from individual congressional districts
and DC. We can take a step in that direction
here in North Carolina. n
There have been a wide range of bills intro-duced
in Congress and in state legislatures
aimed at reforming how elections are con -
ducted. They were stimulated by the contro-versies
surrounding the 2000 presidential
election. Many reforms are aimed at copying
Maine and Nebraska’s rare method of allocat-ing
some electoral college votes by congres-sional
district.
Under our current electoral college system,
each state gets one vote for each of its two
U. S. Senators and one vote for each of its
House members. Whoever wins the statewide
popular vote gets all of the state’s electoral
votes. In Maine and Nebraska, only two of
the electoral votes — those tied to the U. S.
Senators — are determined by the statewide
vote. The state ’ s other electoral votes would
be given to the candidate who wins the popu -
lar vote in each congressional district.
This District System breaks with the original
theory of the electoral college — a group of
white, male property owners meeting in state
capitals to determine the next president. As
our society has grown more diverse and
matured politically so there is considerabl y
wider participation in voting, we need to
think how this can be best manifested in the
electoral college. The District System
approach is a step in that direction.
What would happen in North Carolina under
such a change? As can be seen in the Table
covering presidential elections since 1944, the
Republicans were disadvantaged through
1964. In 1968, George Wallace's American
Independent Party was the victim of the
statewide " winner- takes- all" rule. However,
there was one " defector elector" that year.
Republican physician and John Birch Society
member Lloyd Bailey of Wilson cast his elec-toral
vote for Wallace rather than the
statewide winner Nixon. How did the other
Republican electors react to this heresy?
Bailey said they treated him as if he were " an
illegitimate child at a family reunion." But,
Wallace had carried the 2nd Cong ressional
District where Bailey lived. If the District
approach had been in effect that year,
Wallace would have received that vote plus
three more electoral votes.
There would have been no change in the tw o
presidential elections of the 1970s. Nixon in
1972 and Carter in 1976 carried all of the dis-tricts.
Since then, the winner- take- all system
has disadvantaged the Democrats. For exam -
ple, in the 1992 and 1996 elections
Republicans George Bush and Bob Dole car-ried
the state and won all 14 electoral
Wh at If: Old Re s u l t s, New System
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
6 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
YEAR W/ ECV1 CD WINS2 NEW ECV3 CHANGE4 DISTRICTS5
[ MARGIN]
1944 D- 14 [ 34] 12D ---- 14D ---- ----- —
1948 D- 14 [ 25] 11D 1R 13D 1R + 1R 9
1952 D- 14 [ 8] 8D 4R 10D 4R + 4R 9, 10, 11, 12
1956 D- 14 [ 2] 5D 7R 7D 7R + 7R 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
1960 D- 14 [ 4] 5D 7R 7D 7R + 7R 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
1964 D- 13 [ 12] 10D 1R 12D 1R + 1R 9
1968 R- 13 [ 9] ---- 7R 4A ---- 9R 4A + 4A 1, 2, 3, 76
1972 R- 13 [ 42] ---- 11R ---- 13R ----- —
1976 D- 13 [ 12] 11D ---- 13D ---- ----- —
1980 R- 13 [ 2] 4D 7R 4D 9R + 4D 1, 2, 3, 7
1984 R- 13 [ 24] ---- 11R ---- 13R ----- —
1988 R- 13 [ 4] 1D 10R 1D 12R + 1D 2
1992 R- 14 [ 0.5] 5D 7R 5D 9R + 5D 1, 4, 7, 11, 12
1996 R- 14 [ 5] 3D 9R 3D 11R + 3D 1, 4, 12
2000 R- 14 [ 13] 3D 9R 3D 11R + 3D 1, 4, 12
North Carolina's Electoral College Votes, 1944- 2000
FOOTNOTES —
Parties = D = Democratic; R = Republican; A = American Independent Party [ G. Wallace- 1968].
1W/ ECV[ Margin] = Winning party statewide, number of Electoral College votes, statewide margin ofvictory.
2CD Wins = the number ofCongressional Districts won by the presidential candidates .
3NEW ECV = the shift in allocation ofElectoral College votes if the District Plan were in place that election year.
Two EC votes go with the statewide winner [ US Senate seats], and the rest are from the CD Wins that year.
4Change - which candidate's party would ha ve gained from a switch to the District System for selecting Electoral
College votes.
5Districts - congressional districts that did not vote for the statewide winner.
61968 - Nixon- R won with 40% ofthe statewide vote; Wallace- AIP was second with 31%, and Humphrey- D was
third with 29%.
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
To take a closer look at what might have hap-pened
if the North Carolina electoral college
votes had been determined under the district
system, the Table " The 2000 Presidential
Election by N. C. Congressional Districts" lays
out the specific votes in each district for both
the congressional and presidential races.
Clearly, there is a high correlation between
presidential voting and congressional voting.
Democratic candidate Al Gore received the
fewest votes in the 10th Congressional
District, held by Republican Rep. Cass
Ballenger of Hickory, and the most votes in
the 12th District, which is held by Democrat
Mel Watt of Charlotte.
Also of interest in this table is the relation-ship
between Bush's presidential and the
Republican congressional incumbents' vote
percentages. In three districts, strong
Republican congressional incumbents clearly
helped Bush – Sue Myrick in the 9th District.
Richard Burr in the 5th District and Howard
Coble in the 6th District. In fact, Burr and
Coble were unopposed in their reelection
bids, so Gore had no congressional voting
support to buoy him in those two districts.
Bush won two Democratic districts – Bob
Etheridge's 2nd District and Mike McIntyre's
7th District – by overcoming very weak
Republican congressional campaigns. In
three other districts, Bush and the
Republican incumbent received the same
level of support from the voters – Walter
Jones in the 3rd District, Robin Ha yes in the
8th District, and Cass Ballenger in the 10th
District. Bush probably helped Charles Taylor
in the 11th District in his difficult reelection
bid.
Then there were the three districts in which a
very weak Republican showing in the con-gressional
race could not be overcome by
Bush. These are basically Democratic dis -
tricts for both the presidential and cong res-sional
candidates, and there were well-known
Democratic incumbents seeking
reelection – Eva Clayton in the 1st District,
David Price in the 4th District and Mel Watt
in the 12th District.
All this suggests that if North Carolina were
to allocate some of its electoral votes by con -
gressional district, the cong ressional redis-tricting
fights would gain a new quality. Not
only would the state legislature be determin-ing
which party might win which districts in
the state's next congressional delegation, but
also which party's presidential candidate
might win which district's electoral college
Bush Dist. House Cong.
Vote # Member R Vote
67 10th Ballenger, R 68
64 6th Coble, R 91u
62 5th Burr, R 93u
61 3rd Jones, R 61
60 9th Myrick, R 69
59 11th Taylor, R 55
56 8th Hayes, R 55
55 2nd Etheridge, D 41
53 7th McIntyre, D 29
48 4th Price, D 37
44 1st Clayton, D 33
42 12th Watt, D 33
The 2000 Presidential Election
by N. C. Congressional District
SOURCE — Clark Bensen, " Much Ado About
Nothing?" The Cook Political Report [ April 10, 2001]:
75.
KEY —
Cong. R Vote = % ofdistrict vote won by Republican
candidate for Congress;
u = unopposed by major party candidate .
vote. The potential changes in how politics
would be played out are considerable with
such a change. With such unknown political
odds in play, the chances of the state shifting
to the district system seem quite low. n
›
P residential Phone, Mail Polls Consistent
The exit polls of the 2000 presidential elec-tion
are very valuable tools for political
analysis. Their larger sample sizes allow
smaller sub- groups to broken out of the sam-ple
as a whole and still be large enough to be
valid.
In the nation as a whole, the voting pattern
by income levels followed conventional wis-dom.
In the South, however, this pattern
broke down.
The lowest two income levels – those under
$ 30,000 per year – were still mostly for Gore.
But the poor in the Southern sample were
more likely to vote Republican than the poor
in the national sample. At higher income lev-els,
the South voted dramatically more
Republican than the rest of the country.
North Carolina followed a somewhat differ-ent
pattern from the rest of the South – all
income groups except one voted for Bush.
The only group of voters among which Gore
had a lead were voters whose annual family
income was between $ 30,000 and $ 60,000.
In the nation as a whole, Gore won the vote
North Carolina was not a pivotal state in the 2000
presidential election. The outcome of the race in
the state was never really in doubt. Every poll
showed eventual winner George W. Bush ahead by
at least 4 percentage points. North Carolina’s elec-toral
votes did go to Bush, who won the state hand-ily
with 56 percent to Democrat Al Gore’s 43 per-cent.
The other candidates on the ballot, Har ry Browne, a
Libertarian, and Pat Buchanan, running on the
Reform Party ticket, weren’t quite able to win
22,000 votes between them – less than 0.75 per-cent.
A notable absence from the ballot in the state
was Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who
might have tipped the balance even further in
Bush’s favor.
The Flash Poll and the Mason- Dixon poll were the
most regular polls in the state over the course of
the race. Between the primary and the general
election, they were taken nine times and four
times, respectively. Both polls consistently predict-ed
Bush’s showing in the general election. The
inconsistencies that plagued the Flash Poll in the
governor’s race were absent. The Mason- Dixon poll
was also a good indicator of the election result.
All of the polls screened their respondents in some
way either as being registered voters, likely voters,
or definite voters. Some, like the FlashPoll, includ-ed
in the sample only registered voters who are
likely to vote. This improves the poll's accurac y, but
may increase the cost of doing a poll since the odds
of reaching a registered definite voter with a ran -
dom phone number are probably about 50- 50.
The only other poll that was conducted multiple
times was the Research 2000 Poll, which in early
October predicted a rather paltry amount of Bush
support. Two partisan polls were briefly on the
radar screen immediately after the primar y, and
both predicted Bush as the eventual winner. The
Republican poll, conducted by The Tarrance Group,
came closest to predicting the eventual spread. It
missed by just one point in predicting a 14- point
victory in what turned out to be a 13- point race.
One thing a poll can do to improve its accuracy is
to increase its sample size. Only one poll other
than the Voter News Service Exit Poll had a sample
size of more than 750 voters. A larger number of
respondents does not reduce the margin of error of
a poll greatly, which is why some of the budget-minded
sponsors of the polls probably chose not to
use larger sample sizes. But a larger sample allows
larger samples of subgroups within the state to
reflect more accurately the attitudes of such sub
groups as women or blacks or white men who live
in the eastern part of the state. This information is
more valuable to the news media and political ana-lysts
than a poll result that simply says that
statewide, one candidate is ahead of another by a
certain margin.
The Flash Poll’s sample of 500 likely registered vot-ers
had an overall margin of error of plus or minus
4.5 percentage points. The phone- based Carolina
Polls had 650 respondents and a margin of error of
plus or minus 4 percent. But the Carolina Poll
yielded meaningful subgroup samples. The Flash
Poll could yield meaningful samples only for large
subgroups based on race or gender, but not an
intersection of both. The Carolina Poll, by contrast,
also had questions allowing the results to be bro-ken
down further, by level of education, region and
other factors.
All of the polls but one were done by phone. The
exception, which also happened to have the largest
sample size of any of the pre- election polls, was a
mail poll done by the School of Journalism and
Mass Communication at UNC- CH. The mail poll was
fairly accurate, but it overestimated Bush’s strength.
But mail polling isn ’ t likely to catch on. The fast
pace of newsgathering leads one to conclude that a
mail poll simply cannot be completed fast enough
for modern news media. And since the modern
media usually pay the bills, don’t expect to see
widespread mail polling soon. n
8 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
Date of Poll Polling Organization Sample Bush Gore
Size/ Type R* D*
Feb. 26- 29 Mason- Dixon Poll 633 lvs 47 39
April 24- 26 Mason- Dixon Poll 624 lvs 49 39
May 3- 4 Tarrance Group- R 500 rvs 46 32
May 31- June 4 Hickman- Brown Res.- D 600 dvs 50 43
June 2- 4 Research 2000 Poll 405 lvs 44 39
July 12- 13 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 32
July 20- 23 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 46 39
August 26- 27 Flash Poll 500 lvs 51 44
Sept. 5- 8 NC Free Poll 600 lvs 48 39
Sept. 9- 10 Flash Poll 500 lvs 51 43
Sept. 13- 16 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 47 42
Sept. 18- 19 Flash Poll 500 lvs 49 45
Oct. 4- 6 Research 2000 Poll 404 lvs 48 44
Oct. 5- 8 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 47 43
Oct. 7- 8 Flash Poll 500 lvs 55 40
Oct. 12- 17 KPC Research 770 lvs 50 38
Oct. 14- 15 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 37
Oct. 17- Nov. 3 Carolina Poll- mail 1628 avs 59 41
Oct. 21- 22 Flash Poll 500 lvs 55 41
Oct. 27- 30 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 48 41
Oct. 28- 29 Flash Poll 500 lvs 54 41
Oct. 29- Nov. 2 Carolina Poll- phone 748 ads 53 40
Nov. 4- 5 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 39
Nov. 7 VNS Exit Poll 1216 vs 54 45
Nov. 7 The Actual Vote 56 44
Presidential Polls in North Carolina, 2000
KEY — Type ofsample: ads = adults; dvs = definite voters; lvs = likely
voters; rvs = registered voters; avs = active voters; vs = voter s
* = percentages are of the 2- party vote or intention to vote
EVA N SAU DA, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
All Bush Gore
% % %
Vote by Income
-$ 15K:
Nation 7 37 57
South 8 42 56
NC 7 0 0
$ 15K-$ 30K:
Nation 16 41 54
South 17 43 54
NC 18 53 46
$ 30K-$ 50K:
Nation 24 48 49
South 25 54 44
NC 27 49 50
$ 50K-$ 75K:
Nation 25 51 46
South 25 61 37
NC 23 65 34
$ 75K-$ 100K:
Nation 13 52 45
South 12 62 36
NC 14 63 35
$ 100K+:
Nation 15 54 43
South 12 69 30
NC 11 57 42
Vote by Age
18- 29:
Nation 17 46 48
South 17 52 44
NC 18 50 48
30- 44:
Nation 33 49 48
South 33 57 41
NC 33 54 45
45- 59:
Nation 28 49 48
South 28 56 42
NC 28 57 42
60+:
Nation 22 47 51
South 22 54 45
NC 20 63 37
Vote by Race
White:
Nation 81 54 42
South 74 67 31
NC 78 68 31
Black:
Nation 10 9 90
South 17 8 91
NC 19 9 90
Hispanic:
Nation 7 35 62
South 7 50 48
NC 0 0 0
Asian:
Nation 2 41 55
South 1 0 0
NC 1 0 0
Other:
Nation 1 39 55
South 2 0 0
NC 1 0 0
SOURCE — CNN. com
Exit Polls: N. C., U. S, South
Exit Polls Show Gap Between N. C., Nat i o n
EVA N SAU DA, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
T i cket Splitting Continues in N. C.
JONAT H A N TR I BU LA, Senior Public Policy Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
In every presidential election year since 1992,
North Carolina has elected a Democratic gov-ernor,
while giving its electoral votes to a
Republican presidential candidate. North
Carolina also has both a Republican and a
Democratic U. S. Senator, and a split congres-sional
delegation. In the 2000 election,
Republican presidential candidate George
Bush carried the state with more than 56
percent of the vote, while Democratic guber-natorial
candidate Mike Easley won that race
with 52 percent of the vote. This is a swing
of 8 percentage points of support from the
Republican presidential candidate to the
Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
The 2000 Voter News Service exit poll in
North Carolina provides us with some indica-tions
of just which groups of voters in the
N. C. electorate were splitting their tickets and
breaking party lines. The most interesting
contrasts in the poll results are the differing
levels of support between Bush and
Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard
Vinroot. Statewide, Bush ran 10 points
stronger than Vinroot in the exit poll, and
this spread was even greater among some
categories of voters:
• While the 8 point actual vote shift held for
men, women — and especially white women
— were more likely to make the switch from
Bush to Easley.
• Voters between 18 and 29 years old were
also more likely to vote for Bush and not for
Vinroot. This obviously included some recent
college graduates who have been often
known for their conservative voting over the
past decade.
• Protestants, more than three- quarters of
the exit poll sample, supported both
Republicans. But while Vinroot recei ved just
slightly more than half of their votes, Bush
got more than 60 percent of their votes.
• Those voters who indicated incomes of
over $ 100,000 – normally a Republican and
conservative leaning group of voters – were
the category in which there appeared to be
the greatest slippage from Bush to Easley.
One reason for this cross- party voting b y
North Carolina voters is probably their sup-port
for the party in power. Voters have
clearly been happy with the Democratic
administration in Raleigh, but not as happy
with the Democratic administration in
Washington. Bush benefited from the
malaise around recent national politics,
POLL BUSH VINROOT DIFF.
% % % % PTS.
STATEWIDE 100 54 48 - 6
MEN 47 60 52 - 8
WOMEN 53 52 42 - 10
WHITE WOMEN 51 65 52 - 13
PROTESTANTS 76 61 51 - 10
COLLEGE GRADS 27 55 45 - 10
AGE 18- 29 18 50 39 - 11
EARN > $ 100K 11 57 43 - 14
SOURCE — N. C. Newspaper Reports ofVNS Exit
Poll, November 2000
Exit Polls: Bush v. Vinroot
S E E TICKET SPLITT I N G ON PAGE 11 ›
S E E D I F F E R E N C E S ON PAGE 11 ›
If we compare the primary and general elec-tion
votes for the president on a county- by-county
basis, we can see how any supposed
Democratic voting advantage disappeared
and the real Republican advantage tri-umphed.
Looking at the presidential primar y
results as if they were head- to- head contests
between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Gore
“ won” 74 of the 100 counties to 26 “ won” b y
Bush. This shouldn’t be a surprise as Gore
received more votes in the Democratic
Primary ( 383,696) than Bush recei ved in the
Republican Primary ( 253,485).
But the general election presents an entirel y
different picture. Bush defeated Gore by
nearly 375,000 votes out of the nearly 2.9
million votes cast for the two candidates .
And Gore was able to hold his winning mar-gin
in only 25 of the 74 primary counties he
“ won” as Bush carried the majority of the
vote in 49 of the counties that Gore “ won” in
the primary. No county that Bush “ won” in
the primary shifted its support to Gore in the
general election.
There were regional differences in these
shifts. Eastern North Carolina, which tradi-tionally
has been the strong base for the
Democrats, partially continued that trend. In
18 eastern counties, Gore held his
Democratic Primary “ win” through to a gen-eral
election victory there. However, 24 of
the eastern counties switched from a Gore
primary “ win” to a Bush general election vic-tory.
This eastern North Carolina shift
accounts for nearly half of the counties in
which such a shift occur red.
In contrast, the traditionally Republican west-ern
part of the state was a definite strong-hold
for Bush. Fourteen of the counties
stayed with a Bush “ win” throughout the pri-mary
and general election. The 15 counties
that Gore “ won” in the primary all switched
to support Bush in the general election.
Thus, no western county ended up with a
Gore win in the general election. This is in
stark contrast to the serious inroads that
Bush made in the traditionally Democratic
east.
The Piedmont continued in its split voting for
both parties, but with a decided bias. While
Gore “ won” well over half of the Piedmont
counties in the primary, he ended up onl y
winning one- third of them in the general
election. Bush outdid him in the Piedmont
counties by a 3- to- 1 ratio last November.
From these county- by- county comparisons
we learn the Democratic and Republican
Primaries cannot be adequate predictors for
the outcome of a general election. The pri-mary
voting turnout rates are too low, and
differences between the two parties leads to
incomparable data. The only true things the
primary vote predicted was which candidate
would receive the party nomination in the
party's convention. But, as noted, these
comparisons do provide some interesting
hints of voting trends in the state. n
The May 2, 2000 presidential primary elec-tions
in North Carolina could have been used
as a predictor for the November 7, 2000 elec-tion.
George W. Bush pulled a larger percent
of his Republican Party base – 78.6 percent –
than did Al Gore of his Democratic Party base
– 70.4 percent. There was also a higher rate
of “ no preference” votes by Democrats in
their primary – 9.2 percent – than by
Republicans in their primary – 1.7 percent.
These two trends seemed to indicate Bush
would be more successful among his party
members in the general election than Gore
would be among his. Further it suggests that
some Democrats would continue their pat-tern
of voting for the Republican candidate in
the presidential election.
In the early presidential primary race, both
Bush and Gore faced serious challengers in
John McCain and Bill Bradley. But both
McCain and Bradley had conceded to the ulti-mate
winners by March 9 – nearly two
months before the North Carolina Primar y.
Still, 15.5 percent of the North Carolina pri-mary
voters cast their votes for these two can-didates
who had already conceded defeat.
There could be at least two reasons for this.
The first is that these votes could be viewed
as protests over the direction of the nominat-ing
process in their party had taken. On the
Democratic side, nearly one in every 6 voter s
cast their vote for Bradley. On the Republican
side only one in slightly more than 9 voters
cast their vote for McCain. This suggests
slightly more discontent on the Democratic
side of the ballot.
The second reason could be that these partic-ular
voters had already made up their minds
for whom they were going to vote for before
the candidates conceded in early March. In a
few words, they were so tied to Bradley and
McCain that their concessions to Bush and
Gore meant nothing to these voters. Through
their campaigns, these candidates had devel-oped
strong personal followings across the
country and people would have stuck with
their candidate even though he had lost the
nomination fight.
An important factor to consider in analyzing
these returns is that a much lar ger proportion
of the NC voting population are registered as
Democrats than as Republicans. In order to
win in November, Bush had to pull a substan-tial
number of voters away from their
Democratic registration and get them to vote
for him. In the primaries, 222,405 more
people voted in the Democratic primary than
in the Republican primary. To some, this
might have meant that Gore could af ford to
lose some of the support of registered
Democrats and still win the general election.
Still, the large number of registered
Democrats can be misleading. From the
beginning of the 20th Century until recently
the vast majority of North Carolinians were
registered as Democrats. Often, the real elec-tion
was held in the Democratic primar y, not
in the general election, because the
Democratic Party had such a strong hold over
the state.
Recently, North Carolinians have been voting
in increasing numbers for Republicans in
national elections. This split be gan in the
late 1950s and 1960s and has culminated in
North Carolina being in the Republican col-umn
in every presidential election since 1968,
except 1976. The state also boasts one of the
longest serving Republican U. S. Senators in
Jesse Helms, who has been successful in
bringing “ Jessecrats” to his support each time .
And since 1974, the other U. S. Senate seat has
rotated every six years between a Republican
and a Democrat. Obviously, many registered
N. C. Democrats vote R epublican in presiden-tial
and U. S. senatorial elections as shown by
the election results over the past three
decades.
Another consideration is that almost one out
of every 16 primary voters indicated “ no pref-erence”
in their 2000 presidential primary
vote. This may have been a reflection of
some voters’ views that the presidential pri-mary
races were already o ver. This “ no pref-erence”
voting was most prevalent in the
Democratic primary where nearly one out of
every 11 voters indicated “ no preference” in
their May 2 vote. This might also be a case of
some voters remaining Democratic in their
registration in order to vote for specific local
or statewide candidates in the primary. But
they do not care about the presidential pri-mary
because they intend to vote for the
Republican candidate in November. The
Republican Party did not have a similar prob-lem,
as only one in every 59 voters indicated
“ no preference” in their primary vote.
One can see how elements of the N. C. pri -
mary foreshadowed the general election held
on November 7. The high “ no preference”
rate in the Democratic primary and the more
solid support among Bush’s Republican base
were indicators of his impending electoral
victory. n
P r i m a ry Predicted Election Tre n d s
JO H N BR A N C H, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
1 0 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
Bush v. Gore — The Primaries and the General Election
P r i m a ry and General Election Results Varied Wi d e ly
MAGG Y GO LO B OY, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
while Easley benefited from the good feelings
voters have for the long- running Hunt gover-norship.
Note these job approval ratings
from statewide polls. Clinton's job approval
rating in the 2000 VNS exit poll was at 50 per-cent
positive. Hunt's job approval rating in a
Mason- Dixon poll taken earlier in the year
was 68 percent positive.
Though the pattern of split- ticket voting has
been rather consistent over the last few elec-tions
in North Carolina, Easley benefited from
not campaigning with Gore, while Vinroot
suffered from being unable to grab a ride on
Bush's coattails. Could it have been the
" Charlotte Hex" still at work in the electorate
that hurt Vinroot, or was Easley just a better
candidate? n
› TICKET SPLIT T I N G F ROM PAGE 9
of the youngest age group – 18- to 29- year-olds
– by two points. It was a slim margin in
one of the demographic groups that has tra-ditionally
been a Democratic stronghold.
In the South, Bush won every age group
handily. His smallest margin of victory was
in the 18- to 29- year- olds, which he won by 8
percentage points. His largest was in the 30-
to 44- year- old age group, which he won by
16 percentage points.
North Carolina followed the South’s trend in
this category. All the age divisions went to
Bush, with a staggering 26- point margin in
the 60- and- older age group.
Nearly twice as many blacks live in the South
as in the nation as a whole, and 91 percent
of the blacks in the South voted for Gore, one
percentage point more than the nation as a
whole.
Southern whites were 13 percentage points
more likely to vote for Bush than were whites
in the nation as a whole. North Carolinians
followed the South in this trend. Two- thirds
of the state’s whites voted for Bush. This
supermajority of whites contributed to Bush’s
wins in North Carolina and the South.
In North Carolina, blacks were the only g roup
that voted for Pat Buchanan in statistically
significant numbers, which is interesting con-sidering
Buchanan’s conservative stance.
Otherwise, North Carolina blacks followed
the voting patterns in the nation and in the
region. n
› D I F F E R E N C E S F ROM PAGE 9
N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
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Does high school athletics foster, or impede,
public school reform? What can the academic
side of high school learn from the athletic
side? What issues do sports pose to education
leaders?
Twenty- five educators spent two days in May
considering these and related questions at a
roundtable discussion cosponsored by the
Program on Southern Politics, Media and
Public Life and the Principals’ Executive
Program of the Center for School Leadership
Development. The gathering took place in the
Freedom Forum Conference Center of the
School of Journalism and Mass
Communication.
The education re fo rm and athletics ro u n d t ab l e
did not attempt to draft an agenda, but rat h e r
it was designed to identify issues that deserve
fu rther re s e a rch and deliberation. Here, fo r
ex a m p l e, are some issues that emerge d :
• High schools face both a teacher shortage
and a coaching shortage, with North Carolina
having more non- faculty coaches than ever.
• In general, athletes have high grade- point
averages and lower drop- out rates than their
peers. Team sports illustrate the advantages
of low student- teacher ratios, and mentors
with clear standards.
• Playing seasons have lengthened to the
extent that playoffs end just before the
Christmas break and intrude on test sched-ules
in the spring.
• High schools are likely to confront chal -
lenges in dealing with foreign players, sports
agents and apparel companies.
Special presentations were made by Charlie
Adams, executive director of the North
Carolina High School Athletic Association;
UNC President Emeritus Bill Friday, who
reported on the work of the Knight
Commission in intercollegiate athletics; and
John Dornan, president of the Public School
Forum of North Carolina. Dr. Gerald Ponder,
chair of the Curriculum and Instruction
Department of the School of Education at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro,
invited the NCHSAA to become a stronger
force for education reform. n
P u b l i s h e r ’ s Note
FE R R E L GU I L LO RY, Director

Program on Southern
Politics, Media and
Public Life
School of Journalism
and Mass
Communication
The University
of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
JUNE 2001 • NUMBER 28
Thad Beyle
Editor & Associate Director
beyle@ email. unc. edu
Ryan Thornburg
Managing Editor & Assistant Director
thornburg@ unc. edu
Ferrel Guillory
Publisher & Director
guillory@ unc. edu
N. C. DataNet is a quarterly publica-tion
ofthe Program on Southern
Politics, Media and Public Life in
the School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at The University
ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill.
To receive an electronic version
of future issues, send your name
and e- mail address to
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To subscribe to a pritned version,
call ( 919) 843- 8174 or e- mail
SouthNow@ unc. edu.
Do " bellwether" counties exist in North Carolina for
presidential elections? Does victory in any county
reliably predict which candidate will win the state’s
electoral votes?
Research indicates that such
counties do exist for presi -
dential contests. Twenty-seven
counties sided with
the statewide victor in a t
least 10 of the last 11 presi-dential
elections dating
back to 1960, including
George W. Bush in 2000.
This study identifies those
counties that serve as the
best and worst indicators of
presidential victory in North
Carolina and explores their
possible connections.
Prior to 1968, Democratic
presidential candidates
could feel assured of a vic-tory
in North Carolina and
in most other states of the
Solid South. Then the Civil
Rights movement and shifts
in party ideology combined
with the success in North
Carolina of American Party
candidate George Wallace to
give Republican Richard
Nixon a win in 1968.
Since then, the only Democrat to carry the state
was Jimmy Carter in 1976, no doubt aided by fall-out
from the Watergate scandal. Democratic candi-dates
rarely contest the state now, despite the
excellent track record of Democratic gubernatorial
bids.
Of the 27 presidential bellwether counties since
1960, only three have a perfect record: Carteret,
Dare and New Hanover – all coastal counties .
However, the other 24 predicted the victor each
election since 1968, with the excep-tion
of Union County, which incum-bent
Jimmy Carter won in 1980.
There are several possible factors
that could affect the voting tenden-cies
of these counties. These include
the race, age, and level of education
of the voters within a county, and
whether a county is in or near to a
metropolitan statistical area.
Historical factors are also of impor-tance.
The measures used here ar e
based on 1990 census data.
In western North Carolina, there are
eleven bellwether counties: Ashe,
Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay,
Graham, Macon, McDowell, Polk,
Rutherford, and Transylvania. They
contain an extremely high percent-age
of whites, many with less than a
college education. These mostly
rural counties lie in a traditionally
Republican part of the state but
could have identified with the rural
Southern backgrounds of Lyndon
Johnson ( 1964) and Jimmy Carter
( 1976, 1980).
In the western Piedmont there are
seven bellwether counties - Forsyth, Gaston,
Lincoln, Rowan, Stokes, Surry and Union. Lincoln,
Stokes and Surry bear resemblances to their west-ern
counterparts, but the others tend to have
slightly more educated and di verse population. All
but Surry are classified as a part of a metropolitan
statistical area.
N. C. ’ s Presidential Bellwe t h e rs
ER I C JO H N S ON, Junior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
1 North Carolina’s Presidential
Bellwethers
3 Mapping the 2000 Presidential
Election in North Carolina
4 Growth and Politics in 20th
Century North Carolina
6 What If North Carolina Used the
District System of Assigning
Electors?
7 Presidential and Congressional
Voting Clearly Linked
8 Presidential Phone and Mail Polls
Deliver Consistent Results
9 Exit Polls Show Gap Between
North Carolina and Nation
9 Ticket Splitting Still Prevalent in
North Carolina
10 Primary Predicted Election Trends
1 1 P r i m a ry and General Election
Results Varied Wi d e ly
In This Issue
S E E B E L LW E T H E R S ON PAGE 2 ›
Dating back to 1960, 27 of
North Carolina’s 100 coun-ties
sided with the
statewide victor in at least
10 of the last 11 presiden-tial
elections, including
George W. Bush in 2000.
Most of the bellwether
counties are rural or subur-ban.
Eleven are in the
west, seven are in the
Piedmont, and nine are in
the east.
whites and a relatively lesser- educated popu-lation
lead to elections that the suburban
and rural whites still usually decide. And
Johnston is rapidly becoming a " suburb"
county for Raleigh.
Wilson County presidential election results
tend to be closer than Johnston or Nash
because it is more diverse and lacks subur-ban
voters.
In the second g roup of coastal counties,
Beaufort and Craven both contain somewhat
lesser- educated and relatively diverse popula-tions
living in rural areas. Here the balance
usually tips toward the Republicans. Carteret
and Dare counties both lack diversity, though
Dare’s education levels are higher than the
state average.
Onslow and New Hanover counties contain a
Marine base and a university, respectively,
bringing in voters from all over the country
and state, creating an environment that usu-ally
supports a Republican but maintains a
competitive Democratic base.
At the other end of the bellwether scale are
Northampton and Orange counties which
serve as the worst predictors for presidential
victory in North Carolina. Voters in these
counties consistently vote Democratic— not
surprising given the presence of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
Orange County and the fact that only 40 per-cent
of the people of Northampton County
are white.
Members of the university community and
the minority community tend to stick to the
Democratic Party, and these counties do not
buck that trend.
Presidential bellwethers in North Carolina do
not share the degree of similarity that guber-natorial
bellwethers do, as we will note in an
upcoming issue. If anything, presidential
bellwethers are predominantly rural or sub-urban,
other than Forsyth and New Hanover
counties. The implications for presidential
candidates are less clear in this situation.
Recent years leave Democrats with little rea-son
for optimism for carrying the state, yet
Republicans cannot point to one factor that
guarantees them victory with certainty. To
win the state in a presidential election, candi-dates
should run television advertising cam-paigns
using media markets such as
Charlotte, Piedmont Triad, Research Triangle
and Wilmington media markets. The cover-age
area of stations in these cities encom-passes
most of the 27 bellwether counties
across the state.
Candidates should advertise on television
and concentrate personal appearances in
other battleground states. n
However, these counties generally contain
suburbs of cities such as Charlotte or the
Piedmont Triad ( Greensboro, High Point and
Winston- Salem), which generally vote for the
Republican presidential candidate.
Down East there are nine bellwether counties
in two separate clusters. The first is the pock-et
of Johnston, Nash and Wilson counties just
east of Raleigh and Wake County. Then there
are six coastal counties - Beaufort, Carteret,
Craven, Dare, New Hanover and Onslow. In
the first three, a lower percentage of
2 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
COUNTY 1960* 1964* 1968 1972 1976* 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 BELLWETHER
RATE -%
CARTERET Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
DARE Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
NEW HANOVER Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 100
ASHE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
BEAUFORT Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
BURKE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CALDWELL - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CHEROKEE - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CLAY - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
CRAVEN Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
FORSYTH - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
GASTON - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
GRAHAM - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
JOHNSTON Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
LINCOLN - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
MACON - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
MCDOWELL - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
NASH Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
ONSLOW Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
POLK - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
ROWAN - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
RUTHERFORD - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
STOKES - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
SURRY - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
TRANSYLVANIA - Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
UNION Y Y Y Y Y - Y Y Y Y Y 91
WILSON Y Y A Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y 91
NORTHAMPTON Y Y - - Y - - - - - - 27
ORANGE Y Y - - Y - - - - - - 27
SOURCES — America Votes and United States Census Bureau
KEY —
* — Democratic victory. All other statewide races won by Republicans.
Y — County vote went to statewide winner.
- — County vote did not go to statewide winner
A — American Party candidate George Wallace carried the county.
County Victory as an Indication of State Victory in Presidential Elections
Presidential Bellwether Counties, 1960- 2000 Election Accuracy
2000 Presidential Election Results, by County
2000 Presidential Election Results, by Congressional District
M apping the 2000 Presidential Election in North Caro l i n a
› B E L LW E T H E R S F ROM PAGE 1
›
these two election years also moved from just
below one quarter of the total vote to over
one half of the total vote.
Partisan Voting in the 15 Largest
Counties: Both major parties received just
less than one quarter of their statewide presi-dential
vote from voters in these counties in
the 1900 election. By the 2000 election, their
share of the total state vote for their candi -
dates had more than doubled, with the
Democratic vote up by nearly 4 percentage
points over the Republican vote.
The Three Traditional Metropolitan
Areas: In 1900, one in 12 votes came from
the three traditional metropolitan areas of
Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad, and what is
now the Research Triangle. Now more than
one in three votes comes from the seven core
counties in these metro areas. The greatest
growth in the last few decades has been in
the three core Research Triangle counties —
Durham, Orange and Wake — that have seen
their share of the statewide vote more than
double since the 1960 presidential election.
The Smaller Metropolitan Counties: A
slightly different picture emerges when look-ing
at the four smaller metropolitan counties
of the state — Buncombe ( Asheville),
Cumberland ( Fayetteville), New Hanover
( Wilmington), and Pitt ( Greenville).
Their share of the statewide vote has not
risen as sharply as their more traditional
counterparts — from about one in 15 voter s
in the 1900 presidential election to one in 11
voters in the 2000 election. But each is grow-ing,
with New Hanover County showing the
largest growth over the past two decades.
One political fact of life is clear from these
changes. Each of these metropolitan coun-ties
and the 15 largest counties are part of
the major media markets in the state. Where
they are marginally in those major media
markets cable television and individual
antennas bring the media market to them.
Political campaigning will continue its move
toward direct contact with potential voter s
though television and radio political ads in
those media markets. We saw this quite
clearly in the 2000 elections and can only
expect more in the future as the state contin-ues
growing. n
One gains some
insight into the
changes in our state ’ s
politics by stepping
back and measuring
the impact of growth
on the body politic
during the 20th cen-tury.
To aid in this endea v-or
are four tables
comparing the way in
which North Carolina
voters cast their bal-lots
in six separate
presidential elections
between 1900 and
2000. The specific
presidential elections
selected occurred in
the last year of the
decade, the same
year that the U. S.
Census is taken.
We look at these six
elections from two perspectives. First is the
history of how voters in the 15 largest coun-ties
in the 2000 Census actually voted over
the past 100 years. Second is a similar history
of how voters in the state's major and rising
metropolitan areas have voted over the same
period.
Here are some highlights to consider:
Overall Growth: In the 1900- 2000 period,
the population of the state more than
quadrupled. However, the size of the presi-dential
vote increased nearly
10 times. Much of this change
is due to major shifts in gov-ernmental
election policies —
the adoption of the 19th
Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution in 1920, which
gave women the right to vote;
the passage of the Voting
Rights Act in 1965, which guar-anteed
minorities the right to
vote; and the adoption of the
26th Amendment, which
opened the voting booth to
citizens between 18 and 21.
The 15 Largest Counties
of 2000: A considerable
amount of this growth focused
on the 15 most populous
counties of 2000. While these
counties held just less than a
quarter of the state’s popula-tion
in 1900, by 2000 they
were home to nearly half the
state’s population. Their share
of the presidential vote in
G rowth and Politics in
20th Century North Caro l i n a
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
4 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. state population according to the census conducted that election year.
215 largest counties percent ofthe total N. C. population that year.
3Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates.
4Total presidential vote in the 15 lar gest N. C. counties [ by 2000 Census] that elec-tion
year, all candidates, and percent of the total N. C. presidential vote from these
15 counties.
YEAR TOTAL 15 PRESIDENT 15 LARGEST COUNTIES
POP. 1 CO.% 2 TOTAL VOTE3 VOTE % 4
1900 1,893,810 24.9 292,457 70,699 24.2
1920 2,559,123 29.0 538,295 157,213 29.2
1940 3,571,623 34.3 822,648 287,721 35.0
1960 4,556,155 41.6 1,368,556 573,973 41.9
1980 5,880,095 45.9 1,855,833 838,693 45.2
2000 8,049,313 49.3 2,911,262 1,463,841 50.3
15 Largest Counties of 2000
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total Democratic presidential vote in the 15 largest counties [ by 2000 Census], and
the percent of the total Democratic presidential N. C. vote this represents.
2Total Republican presidential vote in the 15 lar gest counties [ by 2000 Census], and
the percent of the total Republican presidential NC vote this represents.
3Did the national winner carry N. C.?
YEAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN WINNER, PARTY N. C.
VOTE % 1 VOTE % 2 WIN3
1900 38,045 24.1 32,048 24.1 MCKINLEY, R NO
1920 91,994 30.1 65,219 28.0 HARDING, R NO
1940 223,652 36.7 64,069 30.0 ROOSEVELT, D YES
1960 274,489 38.5 296,574 45.2 KENNEDY, D YES
1980 377,172 43.1 423,718 46.3 REAGAN, R YES
2000 659,414 52.4 793,481 48.6 BUSH, R YES
Partisan Voting in the 15 Largest Counties
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates.
2Total presidential vote in the Research Triangle counties – Durham, Orang e, and Wake
– and the percent ofthe statewide vote that represents.
3Total presidential vote in the Charlotte metropolitan counties - Gaston and
Mecklenburg – and the percent of the statewide vote that represents.
4Total presidential vote in the Piedmont Triad counties – Forsyth and Guilford – and the
percent ofthe statewide vote that represents.
YEAR PRESIDENT RESEARCH CHARLOTTE PIEDMONT
RACE VOTE1 TRIANGLE CO'S METRO CO'S TRIAD CO'S
VOTE % 2 VOTE % 3 VOTE % 4
1900 292,457 15,719 5.6 9,713 3.3 11,773 4.0
1920 538,295 23,599 4.4 27,685 5.1 32,450 6.0
1940 822,648 42,822 5.2 57,337 7.0 64,124 7.8
1960 1,368,556 90,517 6.6 128,966 9.4 129,252 9.4
1980 1,855,833 181,423 9.8 188,262 10.1 187,420 10.1
2000 2,911,262 402,168 13.8 322,215 11.1 287,206 9.9
Three Traditional Metro Areas. 1900- 2000
SOURCES — N. C. State Board ofElections, North Carolina Manual, selected years.
FOOTNOTES —
1Total N. C. statewide presidential vote that election year, all candidates .
YEAR PRESIDENT
RACE VOTE1 BUNCOMBE CUMBERLAND NEW HANOVER PITT
VOTES % VOTES % VOTES % VOTES %
1900 292,457 7,899 2.7 4,113 1.4 2,307 0.8 5,456 1.9
1920 538,295 18,184 3.4 5,205 1.0 4,814 0.9 5,060 0.9
1940 822,648 33,601 4.1 7,168 0.9 10,235 1.2 10,436 1.3
1960 1,368,556 52,343 3.8 19,673 1.4 22,957 1.7 15,984 1.2
1980 1,855,833 53,530 2.9 45,228 2.4 32.244 1.7 26,371 1.4
2000 2,911,262 85,476 2.9 77,151 2.7 66,319 2.3 43,075 1.5
Smaller Metro Counties. 1900- 2000
Location of North Carolina’s 15 Most Populous Counties
›
P residential and Congressional Voting Clearly Linke d
votes. Democrat Bill Clinton carried five of
the state’s congressional districts in 1992, and
three of the state’s congressional districts in
1996 yet received none of the state’s electoral
votes. In 2000, Al Gore mirrored the 1996
race by winning Eva Clayton’s 1st District,
David Price’s 4th District, and Mel Watt’s 12th
District. If North Carolina had joined Maine
and Nebraska as the only other state to have
the District System in 2000, the Florida deba-cle
would not be as critical because the three
electoral votes Gore would have received in
North Carolina might have made him the
winner with 270 of the 538 Electoral College
votes. If all the states allocated their electoral
votes by district, Bush still would have won.
The most important reason for such a change
is to reduce the impact of the exit polls and
the media’s need to report who will be the
winner. Currently, exit polls are taken on a
statewide basis through a sampling process
that project results representative of what the
final vote count will be. That would still
work in those states with only one congres-sional
seat and it might also work in those
states with only two congressional seats. But,
in states with more than three cong ressional
districts, the costs of conducting exit polls
would become much greater and there
would probably be quite a few congressional
district electoral votes that are " too close to
call."
On Election Night I worked at the Associated
Press helping call the various elections in the
state. At about 7: 15 p. m., the head of the
Raleigh Bureau got a call from the
Washington AP office indicating they were
going to call Bush the winner in North
Carolina as soon as the polls closed at 7: 30.
Ten minutes later they called and said they
were going to call Mike Easley the winner in
the governor’s race, still before the polls
closed and any votes had been counted.
That became a bit difficult a few minutes
later as the early returns showed Richard
Vinroot leading Easley for at least a half- hour
while Easley was being called the winner.
These early exit poll driven calls in the
Eastern and Mid- Western time- zone states
have been a problem over many of the
recent presidential elections. Once it
becomes clear that the states in those two
time zones have elected the next president,
voting becomes less of a need in the Western
time- zone states. While the media has tried
to control for this impact, we still saw the
Florida vote " called" early for Gore before the
polls had closed in the western Panhandle
counties of that state. Besides the " call"
being wrong as the election in that state was
too close to call, it violated the unwritten
rule against calling the election in a state
before the polls close.
A state legislator in Wisconsin has proposed
that the 2004 presidential vote in his state
not be tabulated and reported until after the
polls close on the west coast. This would
help alleviate the time- zone problems. That
might work but the drive to find out just who
is winning is almost too great to overcome by
instituting such a rule. There are too many
individuals involved in the election process
that could leak information to the anxious
media and political actor s.
Why not just make it all a bit more complex
just like the country we live in has become?
Make the EC vote consist of the 100 votes
from the 50 statewide results and the 438
votes from individual congressional districts
and DC. We can take a step in that direction
here in North Carolina. n
There have been a wide range of bills intro-duced
in Congress and in state legislatures
aimed at reforming how elections are con -
ducted. They were stimulated by the contro-versies
surrounding the 2000 presidential
election. Many reforms are aimed at copying
Maine and Nebraska’s rare method of allocat-ing
some electoral college votes by congres-sional
district.
Under our current electoral college system,
each state gets one vote for each of its two
U. S. Senators and one vote for each of its
House members. Whoever wins the statewide
popular vote gets all of the state’s electoral
votes. In Maine and Nebraska, only two of
the electoral votes — those tied to the U. S.
Senators — are determined by the statewide
vote. The state ’ s other electoral votes would
be given to the candidate who wins the popu -
lar vote in each congressional district.
This District System breaks with the original
theory of the electoral college — a group of
white, male property owners meeting in state
capitals to determine the next president. As
our society has grown more diverse and
matured politically so there is considerabl y
wider participation in voting, we need to
think how this can be best manifested in the
electoral college. The District System
approach is a step in that direction.
What would happen in North Carolina under
such a change? As can be seen in the Table
covering presidential elections since 1944, the
Republicans were disadvantaged through
1964. In 1968, George Wallace's American
Independent Party was the victim of the
statewide " winner- takes- all" rule. However,
there was one " defector elector" that year.
Republican physician and John Birch Society
member Lloyd Bailey of Wilson cast his elec-toral
vote for Wallace rather than the
statewide winner Nixon. How did the other
Republican electors react to this heresy?
Bailey said they treated him as if he were " an
illegitimate child at a family reunion." But,
Wallace had carried the 2nd Cong ressional
District where Bailey lived. If the District
approach had been in effect that year,
Wallace would have received that vote plus
three more electoral votes.
There would have been no change in the tw o
presidential elections of the 1970s. Nixon in
1972 and Carter in 1976 carried all of the dis-tricts.
Since then, the winner- take- all system
has disadvantaged the Democrats. For exam -
ple, in the 1992 and 1996 elections
Republicans George Bush and Bob Dole car-ried
the state and won all 14 electoral
Wh at If: Old Re s u l t s, New System
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
6 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
YEAR W/ ECV1 CD WINS2 NEW ECV3 CHANGE4 DISTRICTS5
[ MARGIN]
1944 D- 14 [ 34] 12D ---- 14D ---- ----- —
1948 D- 14 [ 25] 11D 1R 13D 1R + 1R 9
1952 D- 14 [ 8] 8D 4R 10D 4R + 4R 9, 10, 11, 12
1956 D- 14 [ 2] 5D 7R 7D 7R + 7R 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
1960 D- 14 [ 4] 5D 7R 7D 7R + 7R 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
1964 D- 13 [ 12] 10D 1R 12D 1R + 1R 9
1968 R- 13 [ 9] ---- 7R 4A ---- 9R 4A + 4A 1, 2, 3, 76
1972 R- 13 [ 42] ---- 11R ---- 13R ----- —
1976 D- 13 [ 12] 11D ---- 13D ---- ----- —
1980 R- 13 [ 2] 4D 7R 4D 9R + 4D 1, 2, 3, 7
1984 R- 13 [ 24] ---- 11R ---- 13R ----- —
1988 R- 13 [ 4] 1D 10R 1D 12R + 1D 2
1992 R- 14 [ 0.5] 5D 7R 5D 9R + 5D 1, 4, 7, 11, 12
1996 R- 14 [ 5] 3D 9R 3D 11R + 3D 1, 4, 12
2000 R- 14 [ 13] 3D 9R 3D 11R + 3D 1, 4, 12
North Carolina's Electoral College Votes, 1944- 2000
FOOTNOTES —
Parties = D = Democratic; R = Republican; A = American Independent Party [ G. Wallace- 1968].
1W/ ECV[ Margin] = Winning party statewide, number of Electoral College votes, statewide margin ofvictory.
2CD Wins = the number ofCongressional Districts won by the presidential candidates .
3NEW ECV = the shift in allocation ofElectoral College votes if the District Plan were in place that election year.
Two EC votes go with the statewide winner [ US Senate seats], and the rest are from the CD Wins that year.
4Change - which candidate's party would ha ve gained from a switch to the District System for selecting Electoral
College votes.
5Districts - congressional districts that did not vote for the statewide winner.
61968 - Nixon- R won with 40% ofthe statewide vote; Wallace- AIP was second with 31%, and Humphrey- D was
third with 29%.
TH A D BE Y L E, Pearsall Professor of Political Science, UNC- Chapel Hill
To take a closer look at what might have hap-pened
if the North Carolina electoral college
votes had been determined under the district
system, the Table " The 2000 Presidential
Election by N. C. Congressional Districts" lays
out the specific votes in each district for both
the congressional and presidential races.
Clearly, there is a high correlation between
presidential voting and congressional voting.
Democratic candidate Al Gore received the
fewest votes in the 10th Congressional
District, held by Republican Rep. Cass
Ballenger of Hickory, and the most votes in
the 12th District, which is held by Democrat
Mel Watt of Charlotte.
Also of interest in this table is the relation-ship
between Bush's presidential and the
Republican congressional incumbents' vote
percentages. In three districts, strong
Republican congressional incumbents clearly
helped Bush – Sue Myrick in the 9th District.
Richard Burr in the 5th District and Howard
Coble in the 6th District. In fact, Burr and
Coble were unopposed in their reelection
bids, so Gore had no congressional voting
support to buoy him in those two districts.
Bush won two Democratic districts – Bob
Etheridge's 2nd District and Mike McIntyre's
7th District – by overcoming very weak
Republican congressional campaigns. In
three other districts, Bush and the
Republican incumbent received the same
level of support from the voters – Walter
Jones in the 3rd District, Robin Ha yes in the
8th District, and Cass Ballenger in the 10th
District. Bush probably helped Charles Taylor
in the 11th District in his difficult reelection
bid.
Then there were the three districts in which a
very weak Republican showing in the con-gressional
race could not be overcome by
Bush. These are basically Democratic dis -
tricts for both the presidential and cong res-sional
candidates, and there were well-known
Democratic incumbents seeking
reelection – Eva Clayton in the 1st District,
David Price in the 4th District and Mel Watt
in the 12th District.
All this suggests that if North Carolina were
to allocate some of its electoral votes by con -
gressional district, the cong ressional redis-tricting
fights would gain a new quality. Not
only would the state legislature be determin-ing
which party might win which districts in
the state's next congressional delegation, but
also which party's presidential candidate
might win which district's electoral college
Bush Dist. House Cong.
Vote # Member R Vote
67 10th Ballenger, R 68
64 6th Coble, R 91u
62 5th Burr, R 93u
61 3rd Jones, R 61
60 9th Myrick, R 69
59 11th Taylor, R 55
56 8th Hayes, R 55
55 2nd Etheridge, D 41
53 7th McIntyre, D 29
48 4th Price, D 37
44 1st Clayton, D 33
42 12th Watt, D 33
The 2000 Presidential Election
by N. C. Congressional District
SOURCE — Clark Bensen, " Much Ado About
Nothing?" The Cook Political Report [ April 10, 2001]:
75.
KEY —
Cong. R Vote = % ofdistrict vote won by Republican
candidate for Congress;
u = unopposed by major party candidate .
vote. The potential changes in how politics
would be played out are considerable with
such a change. With such unknown political
odds in play, the chances of the state shifting
to the district system seem quite low. n
›
P residential Phone, Mail Polls Consistent
The exit polls of the 2000 presidential elec-tion
are very valuable tools for political
analysis. Their larger sample sizes allow
smaller sub- groups to broken out of the sam-ple
as a whole and still be large enough to be
valid.
In the nation as a whole, the voting pattern
by income levels followed conventional wis-dom.
In the South, however, this pattern
broke down.
The lowest two income levels – those under
$ 30,000 per year – were still mostly for Gore.
But the poor in the Southern sample were
more likely to vote Republican than the poor
in the national sample. At higher income lev-els,
the South voted dramatically more
Republican than the rest of the country.
North Carolina followed a somewhat differ-ent
pattern from the rest of the South – all
income groups except one voted for Bush.
The only group of voters among which Gore
had a lead were voters whose annual family
income was between $ 30,000 and $ 60,000.
In the nation as a whole, Gore won the vote
North Carolina was not a pivotal state in the 2000
presidential election. The outcome of the race in
the state was never really in doubt. Every poll
showed eventual winner George W. Bush ahead by
at least 4 percentage points. North Carolina’s elec-toral
votes did go to Bush, who won the state hand-ily
with 56 percent to Democrat Al Gore’s 43 per-cent.
The other candidates on the ballot, Har ry Browne, a
Libertarian, and Pat Buchanan, running on the
Reform Party ticket, weren’t quite able to win
22,000 votes between them – less than 0.75 per-cent.
A notable absence from the ballot in the state
was Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who
might have tipped the balance even further in
Bush’s favor.
The Flash Poll and the Mason- Dixon poll were the
most regular polls in the state over the course of
the race. Between the primary and the general
election, they were taken nine times and four
times, respectively. Both polls consistently predict-ed
Bush’s showing in the general election. The
inconsistencies that plagued the Flash Poll in the
governor’s race were absent. The Mason- Dixon poll
was also a good indicator of the election result.
All of the polls screened their respondents in some
way either as being registered voters, likely voters,
or definite voters. Some, like the FlashPoll, includ-ed
in the sample only registered voters who are
likely to vote. This improves the poll's accurac y, but
may increase the cost of doing a poll since the odds
of reaching a registered definite voter with a ran -
dom phone number are probably about 50- 50.
The only other poll that was conducted multiple
times was the Research 2000 Poll, which in early
October predicted a rather paltry amount of Bush
support. Two partisan polls were briefly on the
radar screen immediately after the primar y, and
both predicted Bush as the eventual winner. The
Republican poll, conducted by The Tarrance Group,
came closest to predicting the eventual spread. It
missed by just one point in predicting a 14- point
victory in what turned out to be a 13- point race.
One thing a poll can do to improve its accuracy is
to increase its sample size. Only one poll other
than the Voter News Service Exit Poll had a sample
size of more than 750 voters. A larger number of
respondents does not reduce the margin of error of
a poll greatly, which is why some of the budget-minded
sponsors of the polls probably chose not to
use larger sample sizes. But a larger sample allows
larger samples of subgroups within the state to
reflect more accurately the attitudes of such sub
groups as women or blacks or white men who live
in the eastern part of the state. This information is
more valuable to the news media and political ana-lysts
than a poll result that simply says that
statewide, one candidate is ahead of another by a
certain margin.
The Flash Poll’s sample of 500 likely registered vot-ers
had an overall margin of error of plus or minus
4.5 percentage points. The phone- based Carolina
Polls had 650 respondents and a margin of error of
plus or minus 4 percent. But the Carolina Poll
yielded meaningful subgroup samples. The Flash
Poll could yield meaningful samples only for large
subgroups based on race or gender, but not an
intersection of both. The Carolina Poll, by contrast,
also had questions allowing the results to be bro-ken
down further, by level of education, region and
other factors.
All of the polls but one were done by phone. The
exception, which also happened to have the largest
sample size of any of the pre- election polls, was a
mail poll done by the School of Journalism and
Mass Communication at UNC- CH. The mail poll was
fairly accurate, but it overestimated Bush’s strength.
But mail polling isn ’ t likely to catch on. The fast
pace of newsgathering leads one to conclude that a
mail poll simply cannot be completed fast enough
for modern news media. And since the modern
media usually pay the bills, don’t expect to see
widespread mail polling soon. n
8 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
Date of Poll Polling Organization Sample Bush Gore
Size/ Type R* D*
Feb. 26- 29 Mason- Dixon Poll 633 lvs 47 39
April 24- 26 Mason- Dixon Poll 624 lvs 49 39
May 3- 4 Tarrance Group- R 500 rvs 46 32
May 31- June 4 Hickman- Brown Res.- D 600 dvs 50 43
June 2- 4 Research 2000 Poll 405 lvs 44 39
July 12- 13 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 32
July 20- 23 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 46 39
August 26- 27 Flash Poll 500 lvs 51 44
Sept. 5- 8 NC Free Poll 600 lvs 48 39
Sept. 9- 10 Flash Poll 500 lvs 51 43
Sept. 13- 16 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 47 42
Sept. 18- 19 Flash Poll 500 lvs 49 45
Oct. 4- 6 Research 2000 Poll 404 lvs 48 44
Oct. 5- 8 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 47 43
Oct. 7- 8 Flash Poll 500 lvs 55 40
Oct. 12- 17 KPC Research 770 lvs 50 38
Oct. 14- 15 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 37
Oct. 17- Nov. 3 Carolina Poll- mail 1628 avs 59 41
Oct. 21- 22 Flash Poll 500 lvs 55 41
Oct. 27- 30 Mason- Dixon Poll 625 lvs 48 41
Oct. 28- 29 Flash Poll 500 lvs 54 41
Oct. 29- Nov. 2 Carolina Poll- phone 748 ads 53 40
Nov. 4- 5 Flash Poll 500 lvs 56 39
Nov. 7 VNS Exit Poll 1216 vs 54 45
Nov. 7 The Actual Vote 56 44
Presidential Polls in North Carolina, 2000
KEY — Type ofsample: ads = adults; dvs = definite voters; lvs = likely
voters; rvs = registered voters; avs = active voters; vs = voter s
* = percentages are of the 2- party vote or intention to vote
EVA N SAU DA, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
All Bush Gore
% % %
Vote by Income
-$ 15K:
Nation 7 37 57
South 8 42 56
NC 7 0 0
$ 15K-$ 30K:
Nation 16 41 54
South 17 43 54
NC 18 53 46
$ 30K-$ 50K:
Nation 24 48 49
South 25 54 44
NC 27 49 50
$ 50K-$ 75K:
Nation 25 51 46
South 25 61 37
NC 23 65 34
$ 75K-$ 100K:
Nation 13 52 45
South 12 62 36
NC 14 63 35
$ 100K+:
Nation 15 54 43
South 12 69 30
NC 11 57 42
Vote by Age
18- 29:
Nation 17 46 48
South 17 52 44
NC 18 50 48
30- 44:
Nation 33 49 48
South 33 57 41
NC 33 54 45
45- 59:
Nation 28 49 48
South 28 56 42
NC 28 57 42
60+:
Nation 22 47 51
South 22 54 45
NC 20 63 37
Vote by Race
White:
Nation 81 54 42
South 74 67 31
NC 78 68 31
Black:
Nation 10 9 90
South 17 8 91
NC 19 9 90
Hispanic:
Nation 7 35 62
South 7 50 48
NC 0 0 0
Asian:
Nation 2 41 55
South 1 0 0
NC 1 0 0
Other:
Nation 1 39 55
South 2 0 0
NC 1 0 0
SOURCE — CNN. com
Exit Polls: N. C., U. S, South
Exit Polls Show Gap Between N. C., Nat i o n
EVA N SAU DA, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
T i cket Splitting Continues in N. C.
JONAT H A N TR I BU LA, Senior Public Policy Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
In every presidential election year since 1992,
North Carolina has elected a Democratic gov-ernor,
while giving its electoral votes to a
Republican presidential candidate. North
Carolina also has both a Republican and a
Democratic U. S. Senator, and a split congres-sional
delegation. In the 2000 election,
Republican presidential candidate George
Bush carried the state with more than 56
percent of the vote, while Democratic guber-natorial
candidate Mike Easley won that race
with 52 percent of the vote. This is a swing
of 8 percentage points of support from the
Republican presidential candidate to the
Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
The 2000 Voter News Service exit poll in
North Carolina provides us with some indica-tions
of just which groups of voters in the
N. C. electorate were splitting their tickets and
breaking party lines. The most interesting
contrasts in the poll results are the differing
levels of support between Bush and
Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard
Vinroot. Statewide, Bush ran 10 points
stronger than Vinroot in the exit poll, and
this spread was even greater among some
categories of voters:
• While the 8 point actual vote shift held for
men, women — and especially white women
— were more likely to make the switch from
Bush to Easley.
• Voters between 18 and 29 years old were
also more likely to vote for Bush and not for
Vinroot. This obviously included some recent
college graduates who have been often
known for their conservative voting over the
past decade.
• Protestants, more than three- quarters of
the exit poll sample, supported both
Republicans. But while Vinroot recei ved just
slightly more than half of their votes, Bush
got more than 60 percent of their votes.
• Those voters who indicated incomes of
over $ 100,000 – normally a Republican and
conservative leaning group of voters – were
the category in which there appeared to be
the greatest slippage from Bush to Easley.
One reason for this cross- party voting b y
North Carolina voters is probably their sup-port
for the party in power. Voters have
clearly been happy with the Democratic
administration in Raleigh, but not as happy
with the Democratic administration in
Washington. Bush benefited from the
malaise around recent national politics,
POLL BUSH VINROOT DIFF.
% % % % PTS.
STATEWIDE 100 54 48 - 6
MEN 47 60 52 - 8
WOMEN 53 52 42 - 10
WHITE WOMEN 51 65 52 - 13
PROTESTANTS 76 61 51 - 10
COLLEGE GRADS 27 55 45 - 10
AGE 18- 29 18 50 39 - 11
EARN > $ 100K 11 57 43 - 14
SOURCE — N. C. Newspaper Reports ofVNS Exit
Poll, November 2000
Exit Polls: Bush v. Vinroot
S E E TICKET SPLITT I N G ON PAGE 11 ›
S E E D I F F E R E N C E S ON PAGE 11 ›
If we compare the primary and general elec-tion
votes for the president on a county- by-county
basis, we can see how any supposed
Democratic voting advantage disappeared
and the real Republican advantage tri-umphed.
Looking at the presidential primar y
results as if they were head- to- head contests
between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Gore
“ won” 74 of the 100 counties to 26 “ won” b y
Bush. This shouldn’t be a surprise as Gore
received more votes in the Democratic
Primary ( 383,696) than Bush recei ved in the
Republican Primary ( 253,485).
But the general election presents an entirel y
different picture. Bush defeated Gore by
nearly 375,000 votes out of the nearly 2.9
million votes cast for the two candidates .
And Gore was able to hold his winning mar-gin
in only 25 of the 74 primary counties he
“ won” as Bush carried the majority of the
vote in 49 of the counties that Gore “ won” in
the primary. No county that Bush “ won” in
the primary shifted its support to Gore in the
general election.
There were regional differences in these
shifts. Eastern North Carolina, which tradi-tionally
has been the strong base for the
Democrats, partially continued that trend. In
18 eastern counties, Gore held his
Democratic Primary “ win” through to a gen-eral
election victory there. However, 24 of
the eastern counties switched from a Gore
primary “ win” to a Bush general election vic-tory.
This eastern North Carolina shift
accounts for nearly half of the counties in
which such a shift occur red.
In contrast, the traditionally Republican west-ern
part of the state was a definite strong-hold
for Bush. Fourteen of the counties
stayed with a Bush “ win” throughout the pri-mary
and general election. The 15 counties
that Gore “ won” in the primary all switched
to support Bush in the general election.
Thus, no western county ended up with a
Gore win in the general election. This is in
stark contrast to the serious inroads that
Bush made in the traditionally Democratic
east.
The Piedmont continued in its split voting for
both parties, but with a decided bias. While
Gore “ won” well over half of the Piedmont
counties in the primary, he ended up onl y
winning one- third of them in the general
election. Bush outdid him in the Piedmont
counties by a 3- to- 1 ratio last November.
From these county- by- county comparisons
we learn the Democratic and Republican
Primaries cannot be adequate predictors for
the outcome of a general election. The pri-mary
voting turnout rates are too low, and
differences between the two parties leads to
incomparable data. The only true things the
primary vote predicted was which candidate
would receive the party nomination in the
party's convention. But, as noted, these
comparisons do provide some interesting
hints of voting trends in the state. n
The May 2, 2000 presidential primary elec-tions
in North Carolina could have been used
as a predictor for the November 7, 2000 elec-tion.
George W. Bush pulled a larger percent
of his Republican Party base – 78.6 percent –
than did Al Gore of his Democratic Party base
– 70.4 percent. There was also a higher rate
of “ no preference” votes by Democrats in
their primary – 9.2 percent – than by
Republicans in their primary – 1.7 percent.
These two trends seemed to indicate Bush
would be more successful among his party
members in the general election than Gore
would be among his. Further it suggests that
some Democrats would continue their pat-tern
of voting for the Republican candidate in
the presidential election.
In the early presidential primary race, both
Bush and Gore faced serious challengers in
John McCain and Bill Bradley. But both
McCain and Bradley had conceded to the ulti-mate
winners by March 9 – nearly two
months before the North Carolina Primar y.
Still, 15.5 percent of the North Carolina pri-mary
voters cast their votes for these two can-didates
who had already conceded defeat.
There could be at least two reasons for this.
The first is that these votes could be viewed
as protests over the direction of the nominat-ing
process in their party had taken. On the
Democratic side, nearly one in every 6 voter s
cast their vote for Bradley. On the Republican
side only one in slightly more than 9 voters
cast their vote for McCain. This suggests
slightly more discontent on the Democratic
side of the ballot.
The second reason could be that these partic-ular
voters had already made up their minds
for whom they were going to vote for before
the candidates conceded in early March. In a
few words, they were so tied to Bradley and
McCain that their concessions to Bush and
Gore meant nothing to these voters. Through
their campaigns, these candidates had devel-oped
strong personal followings across the
country and people would have stuck with
their candidate even though he had lost the
nomination fight.
An important factor to consider in analyzing
these returns is that a much lar ger proportion
of the NC voting population are registered as
Democrats than as Republicans. In order to
win in November, Bush had to pull a substan-tial
number of voters away from their
Democratic registration and get them to vote
for him. In the primaries, 222,405 more
people voted in the Democratic primary than
in the Republican primary. To some, this
might have meant that Gore could af ford to
lose some of the support of registered
Democrats and still win the general election.
Still, the large number of registered
Democrats can be misleading. From the
beginning of the 20th Century until recently
the vast majority of North Carolinians were
registered as Democrats. Often, the real elec-tion
was held in the Democratic primar y, not
in the general election, because the
Democratic Party had such a strong hold over
the state.
Recently, North Carolinians have been voting
in increasing numbers for Republicans in
national elections. This split be gan in the
late 1950s and 1960s and has culminated in
North Carolina being in the Republican col-umn
in every presidential election since 1968,
except 1976. The state also boasts one of the
longest serving Republican U. S. Senators in
Jesse Helms, who has been successful in
bringing “ Jessecrats” to his support each time .
And since 1974, the other U. S. Senate seat has
rotated every six years between a Republican
and a Democrat. Obviously, many registered
N. C. Democrats vote R epublican in presiden-tial
and U. S. senatorial elections as shown by
the election results over the past three
decades.
Another consideration is that almost one out
of every 16 primary voters indicated “ no pref-erence”
in their 2000 presidential primary
vote. This may have been a reflection of
some voters’ views that the presidential pri-mary
races were already o ver. This “ no pref-erence”
voting was most prevalent in the
Democratic primary where nearly one out of
every 11 voters indicated “ no preference” in
their May 2 vote. This might also be a case of
some voters remaining Democratic in their
registration in order to vote for specific local
or statewide candidates in the primary. But
they do not care about the presidential pri-mary
because they intend to vote for the
Republican candidate in November. The
Republican Party did not have a similar prob-lem,
as only one in every 59 voters indicated
“ no preference” in their primary vote.
One can see how elements of the N. C. pri -
mary foreshadowed the general election held
on November 7. The high “ no preference”
rate in the Democratic primary and the more
solid support among Bush’s Republican base
were indicators of his impending electoral
victory. n
P r i m a ry Predicted Election Tre n d s
JO H N BR A N C H, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
1 0 N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
Bush v. Gore — The Primaries and the General Election
P r i m a ry and General Election Results Varied Wi d e ly
MAGG Y GO LO B OY, Senior Political Science Major, UNC- Chapel Hill
while Easley benefited from the good feelings
voters have for the long- running Hunt gover-norship.
Note these job approval ratings
from statewide polls. Clinton's job approval
rating in the 2000 VNS exit poll was at 50 per-cent
positive. Hunt's job approval rating in a
Mason- Dixon poll taken earlier in the year
was 68 percent positive.
Though the pattern of split- ticket voting has
been rather consistent over the last few elec-tions
in North Carolina, Easley benefited from
not campaigning with Gore, while Vinroot
suffered from being unable to grab a ride on
Bush's coattails. Could it have been the
" Charlotte Hex" still at work in the electorate
that hurt Vinroot, or was Easley just a better
candidate? n
› TICKET SPLIT T I N G F ROM PAGE 9
of the youngest age group – 18- to 29- year-olds
– by two points. It was a slim margin in
one of the demographic groups that has tra-ditionally
been a Democratic stronghold.
In the South, Bush won every age group
handily. His smallest margin of victory was
in the 18- to 29- year- olds, which he won by 8
percentage points. His largest was in the 30-
to 44- year- old age group, which he won by
16 percentage points.
North Carolina followed the South’s trend in
this category. All the age divisions went to
Bush, with a staggering 26- point margin in
the 60- and- older age group.
Nearly twice as many blacks live in the South
as in the nation as a whole, and 91 percent
of the blacks in the South voted for Gore, one
percentage point more than the nation as a
whole.
Southern whites were 13 percentage points
more likely to vote for Bush than were whites
in the nation as a whole. North Carolinians
followed the South in this trend. Two- thirds
of the state’s whites voted for Bush. This
supermajority of whites contributed to Bush’s
wins in North Carolina and the South.
In North Carolina, blacks were the only g roup
that voted for Pat Buchanan in statistically
significant numbers, which is interesting con-sidering
Buchanan’s conservative stance.
Otherwise, North Carolina blacks followed
the voting patterns in the nation and in the
region. n
› D I F F E R E N C E S F ROM PAGE 9
N O RTH CARO L I NA DATA N E T
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School of Journalism and Mass Communications
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Chapel Hill, N. C. 27599- 3365
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Chapel Hill, N. C.
Does high school athletics foster, or impede,
public school reform? What can the academic
side of high school learn from the athletic
side? What issues do sports pose to education
leaders?
Twenty- five educators spent two days in May
considering these and related questions at a
roundtable discussion cosponsored by the
Program on Southern Politics, Media and
Public Life and the Principals’ Executive
Program of the Center for School Leadership
Development. The gathering took place in the
Freedom Forum Conference Center of the
School of Journalism and Mass
Communication.
The education re fo rm and athletics ro u n d t ab l e
did not attempt to draft an agenda, but rat h e r
it was designed to identify issues that deserve
fu rther re s e a rch and deliberation. Here, fo r
ex a m p l e, are some issues that emerge d :
• High schools face both a teacher shortage
and a coaching shortage, with North Carolina
having more non- faculty coaches than ever.
• In general, athletes have high grade- point
averages and lower drop- out rates than their
peers. Team sports illustrate the advantages
of low student- teacher ratios, and mentors
with clear standards.
• Playing seasons have lengthened to the
extent that playoffs end just before the
Christmas break and intrude on test sched-ules
in the spring.
• High schools are likely to confront chal -
lenges in dealing with foreign players, sports
agents and apparel companies.
Special presentations were made by Charlie
Adams, executive director of the North
Carolina High School Athletic Association;
UNC President Emeritus Bill Friday, who
reported on the work of the Knight
Commission in intercollegiate athletics; and
John Dornan, president of the Public School
Forum of North Carolina. Dr. Gerald Ponder,
chair of the Curriculum and Instruction
Department of the School of Education at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro,
invited the NCHSAA to become a stronger
force for education reform. n
P u b l i s h e r ’ s Note
FE R R E L GU I L LO RY, Director